Spanish-American WarThis short war in 1898 that signaled the emergence of the United States as a world power, was a harbinger of the use of intelligence in the 20th century, including the interception of supposedly private communications and the intrusive role of the press, for good and ill.
U.S. President McKinley received intelligence information on the war in Cuba within an hour of the action.
The United States had been, for some years, in a state of protest over Spanish colonial policies in Cuba, only 90 miles from American shores. Moreover, both the U.S. Navy and the Revenue Cutter Service (forerunner of the Coast Guard) had been engaged in the interdiction of gunrunners departing the U.S. coastline to assist Cuban insurgents. Accordingly, the sinking of USS Maine in Havana, the Cuban capital, began operations in circumstances familiar to U.S. forces, at least in the Caribbean region.
However, this would be a world war, and neither the United States, nor Spain, nor any other power had a world-class intelligence organization. Accordingly, there were a number of heroic individual efforts, the most memorable of which was Lieutenant Andrew S. Rowan's carrying a presidential missive to the Cuban insurgents, immortalized in the book, A Message to Garcia. Similarly, in the Pacific, the Pacific Fleet's Admiral George Dewey (who had to purchase his own charts to proceed to the Philippine Islands and defeat Spain's Pacific Fleet), had his aide, Ensign F. B. Upham, pose as a traveler in Hong Kong, interviewing those who had recently visited Spanish possessions in the Pacific. Such makeshift efforts of adapt-improvise-and-overcome were widespread and often remarkably